First up, Gillian F. Taylor tells us how Sheriff Darrow helped complete her transition from sci-fi fan to accomplished western novelist as she metaphorically recast the star of a cult TV series from space opera to horse opera. This crossover element in the three Darrow westerns has introduced new readers to the genre.

A little later, Chap O'Keefe points to the older, maybe more obvious links between crime fiction and western fiction, and reintroduces his somewhat abrasive ex-Pinkerton agent, Joshua Dillard — a man who always wins the day but misses out on the money. (Don't you know someone else like that?)

Between these fascinating inside stories, you can play tracker of western fiction gossip in Hoofprints, a new set of lighter impressions. Then, if the sun's still up, you can round out your western day surveying with Lance Howard the vastness of the BHW range. . . .

How Gillian F. Taylor put a TV star into another orbit THE RETURN OF THE SPACE COWBOYS Yes, Sheriff Darrow and Deputy Hugh Keating are back with Darrow's Badge, their third adventure. Or is it?

A long time ago, in a living-room in rural England, I used to watch a sci-fi TV series called Blake's 7. The series followed the adventures of an ill-assorted bunch of freedom fighters and criminals who were rebelling against the fascist Terran Federation. It ran for four series and has survived as a cult in spite of woefully low budgets and subsequently dodgy special effects. The strong points were the writing and acting, which created characters that viewers cared deeply about.

The two longest-serving characters were Avon and Vila, played by Paul Darrow and Michael Keating. Both characters were criminals, who escaped with the freedom fighter Blake, and who somewhat reluctantly continued his fight after Blake's disappearance. Avon was the computer genius, who tried to avoid getting emotionally close to his companions, and who insisted he could manage better alone. Vila was a cowardly, compulsive thief from the opposite end of the social spectrum, who thrived on the company of others. In spite of their differences, they respected each other's talents, and shared a degree of self-interest that sometimes united them against the idealism of other crew members. Both characters remain very popular with fans, who treasure their way with words.

Before takeoff . . . Paul Darrow (Avon,left), and Michael Keating (Vila).

Vila: 'I've got this shocking pain right behind the eyes.'
Avon: 'Have you considered amputation?'

As a fan, I collected Blake's 7 merchandise, which included a monthly magazine. In one magazine, Paul Darrow said that he would love to appear in a western. Years later, when I was writing westerns, I decided to honour this wish, if not quite in the way he'd hoped for. I couldn't cast Paul in a film, but I could use his name in a book. So could I fit Avon, and of course Vila, into a western?

The characters have appeared in other forms of fiction before. My dictionary defines the word "avatar" as "The manifestation of a deity in human or animal form, or a visible manifestation of an abstract concept". In writing now, avatar is commonly used to describe a character based on, or directly inspired by, a character from another book, or film/TV series.

In my case, I followed the lead of writers such as Tanith Lee and Lois McMaster Bujold, by "borrowing" characters from the 1970s Blake's 7. Tanith Lee, the fantasy author, wrote two episodes of Blake's 7, and subsequently wrote a novel called Kill The Dead, which featured Avon- and Vila-inspired characters. One is called Parl Dro, which is pretty much what Paul Darrow's autograph looks like.

From Spaceships to Horses

So how to suit Avon and Vila to the Wild West? I wanted to write a novel set in a town, rather than on the range, so I took the two anti-authority characters and make them into lawmen, while still keeping the basic flavour of the characters.

Both Darrow and Keating are rather reluctant lawmen. It was impossible to see Avon/Sheriff Darrow as anything other than aristocratic, so I made him into a Southern gentleman. His family fortune has been lost in the Civil War so he becomes Sheriff simply to earn a living even though he openly refers to the little rail town as a "God-forsaken backwoods town".

Like Avon, Sheriff Darrow is something of a loner, who doesn't like to admit any dependence on others. He has little patience with fools and uses his forceful personality to bully weaker characters but can be surprisingly gentle with the harmless and innocent.

I have a book on English gentlemen in the West, and wanted to explore this idea. Although in the TV series, Vila was a low-grade citizen, I decided to make Deputy Hugh into an English gentleman. More than a few of the wealthy Englishmen in the West were black sheep, sent out there by their families. Given Vila's weakness for wine, women and gambling, those flaws in Hugh would help explain what he was doing in a little Wyoming railroad town. Hugh has an income from his family, so he doesn't really need the deputy's job. As Vila stays with Avon for security and because he needs companions, so Hugh stays in Govan because he knows Darrow will look out for him, and because he has made friends there.

The first Darrow title was Darrow's Law, followed by Darrow's Word and, in June 2005, Darrow's Badge. The characters have grown and developed, moving away slightly from their sci-fi originals, but perhaps presenting a version of what might have happened to those people in other circumstances. Their town, Govan, has grown with them, acquiring new characters, buildings and streets. Charting the growth of the town is interesting in its own right. Towns of the west prided themselves on their success; the opening of a new school or church was often the centre of a public celebration. Having Darrow and Hugh as the lawmen of this growing town puts them in the centre of public life. They attend town functions such as the Thanksgiving Supper, they control the supply of food within the town when a blizzard causes shortages and have a say in local issues like the building of a new footbridge.

A whole new scene. Back for more.

Darrow's Badge

Darrow and Hugh soon began to write their own stories. Having introduced Minnie Davis in the first book, and having got Hugh to the point of proposing marriage at the end of the second, the next event would be their wedding. I thought about Hugh's older brother coming to Wyoming, and seeing how Hugh had changed, and about Minnie meeting these wealthy, upper-class English people and being given a dowry of jewels that would be something completely remote from her previous experience. All very interesting, but not the stuff of an action-packed western adventure. I was talking about this to my friend, Sarah McEvoy, who remarked: "What if someone stole the jewels?"

Doh! Of course! Thanks, Sarah. So now I had the perfect excuse to make Hugh's wedding the centre of the next story. Out of that I got a story of a robbery and a battle of wits between sheriff and thieves.

I also wanted to write something about a travelling circus, or a carnival. Carnivals appear in western films like My Name Is Nobody and Ride the High Country. Internet research proved frustrating, but then I remembered that the National Fairground Archive happens to be in Sheffield University library, about five minutes' walk from my home. What's more, the curator of the archive is an old acquaintance from my university days. I contacted Vanessa Toulmin, who was very helpful, and spent a lovely few hours browsing the collection. Most of it related to the English fairground and circus, but Vanessa helped me to find relevant material. Researching westerns is certainly educational!

I'm a great believer in recycling, in stories, as well as in my house. Darrow's Badge features a case of book imitating TV, imitating film. In The Magnificent Seven, James Coburn shoots a fleeing bandit off his horse. When praised for his shooting, he retorts that he had been aiming for the horse. This was deliberately referenced in the Blake's 7 episode Orac. Avon saves Blake's life by shooting arch-enemy Travis's gun-hand. When praised by Blake on his shooting, Avon answers tetchily that he had been aiming for Travis's head.

The latest.

In Darrow's Badge, Darrow accompanies Hugh, Minnie and Hugh's brother and his wife, on an off-duty trip to the carnival. After the others have a try at the shooting gallery, Darrow is expected to do the same:

Hugh looked at Darrow expectantly. The sheriff stared coolly back.

'Why should I waste a dime in order to win some tasteless knick-knack?' he drawled.

'So that you can donate it to the next Church tombola and pretend to have a heart,' Hugh shot back.

Darrow pretended not to have heard, and picked up one of the light rifles..In his opinion, the least offensive gewgaw he could win was the glass ashtray. Having calculated the score he needed to win it, the sheriff carefully aimed and fired his five shots. Each hit home close to the centre of the card. The last one was dead centre of the ace of hearts.

'Oh, good shot,' Hugh's brother said generously.

Darrow wasn't pleased with himself. 'I was aiming for the king.'

A Wish is Granted

Having got Sheriff Darrow into print, I sent a copy of Darrow's Law to Paul Darrow, who was delighted by it, and is continuing to follow the adventures of his namesake. Paul is the wrong age to play the sheriff on screen now, but it would be lovely to hear him reading audio versions of the books. I saw him playing Elvis Presley in 1988, complete with Southern accent, and he's also a good mimic. I saw him on stage ten years later, playing Captain Vimes in an excellent adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards!. Paul was having a whale of a time, using the excuse to do his best Humphrey Bogart and Clint Eastwood impressions.

I've also had good feedback from Blake's 7 fans. I took copies of Darrow's Word along to a Blake's 7 convention last year, and sold some there. Selling westerns at a sci-fi convention has to be some kind of an achievement!

Ultimately though, the Darrow westerns are westerns. When writing them I switch fully to western mode. Good writing in any genre requires the same elements of good plotting, description and characterization, but there's a satisfaction in using them to conjure up a particular time and place. I enjoy visiting the West and I believe that Avon and Vila have settled in so comfortably that readers who don't know anything about Blake's 7 will never guess that Sheriff Darrow and Deputy Keating have close cousins somewhere in outer space.

So what next for Darrow and Hugh? Well, I have this title, Darrow's Debt, and a few elements of the story. I just need to figure out how it all goes together. . . .

— Gillian F. Taylor, whose latest BHW is Darrow's Badge. Read an extract here.

Chap O'Keefe asks when is a hero not a hero? DILLARD RIDES AGAIN Western writers have written sequels since dime-novel days.

An early example was Deadwood Dick created for publisher Erasmus Beadle by Edward L. Wheeler in the late 1870s. The tradition continued through the Clarence E. Mulford Bar 20 decades, the Louis L'Amour Sackett years, and to the present day.

In modern times in Britain, a small crowd of Piccadilly Cowboy writers each had or shared a series character, like Edge, Angel, Bodie and Hart, and in the United States publishers scored worthwhile sales for adult western series of the Longarm and Spur kind, written under house bylines. July will mark the return of the series character Joshua Dillard to the BHW list. If you haven't already met him in previous adventures, no better introduction can be be had than by reading the opening pages from his latest adventure, Ride the Wild Country.

Hoppy days.

Chapter One "Fight in Frisco" recaps on Dillard's history and character, and is a showcase example of  BHW blood-and-thunder. The touchy hero is robbed at a parlour house and puts on a bravura performance! See extract.

Dillard made his first appearance in the second BHW I wrote, Shootout at Hellyer's Creek. Publisher John Hale described that book as "an expertly written and splendidly prepared novel . . . we will send the typescript straight to the setter". What the book wasn't written or prepared as was the first in a series. Dillard was the central character, but the dizzy heroine, Dorothy-May Pennydale, and the greenhorn dime-novel author, Clement P. Conway, were from an author's standpoint equally satisfying and colourful creations.

Dillard's first.

Dillard, a lone rider with an ex-Pinkerton background, came on the scene on page 17 in the opening lines of chapter two, which was headed "The Hired Gun". He was imbued with rugged motivations and trademarks of his own, but at bottom he was the detective character it's handy to have around when you write books that have a strong crime or mystery element.

Others have remarked how traditional westerns are related to the crime story, sharing murder, robbery, guns for hire and other characteristics. It's also remarkable how many successful western writers have played the crossover card, sometimes switching full-time into the crime genre. Elmore Leonard comes to mind, and Britain has Hart writer John Harvey's much-applauded Resnick contemporary police procedurals.

In my early editorial career, the Sexton Blake detective series loomed large, and in 1992 that continued to exert its influence on the style and content of the first Chap O'Keefe westerns. So with Joshua Dillard I was adopting a comfortable, convenient convention rather than adopting a character I felt could become special.

Series heroes can be a pain as well as a pleasure. They must be consistent, book after book, or their fans will complain. They can become monsters to their creators. Think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Leslie Charteris and Ian Fleming — all to their regret dominated by their brain-children, and at least one forced to enlist the services of ghost writers to satisfy a demand which became unpalatable.

The "Loser" Hero

After Shootout at Hellyer's Creek (which was given a brilliant Faba cover), I wrote another two westerns before picking up the Dillard thread with The Sandhills Shootings. His entry into that book was again determined by the plot's need of a troubleshooting, detective character. Why invent a new one when one was ready-made? The irony which has added personal spice to writing BHWs about Joshua Dillard is that he is in a large sense a loser. He might solve the mysteries and confound the badmen brilliantly every time, but he never makes a financial profit from his cases. Thus his first book ended:

Unwanted competition.

As for Joshua Dillard himself, he was thinking he'd have to resign his commission [protecting Clem Conway] and settle for the measly hundred dollars advance on account of his expenses.

He could save Clement P. Conway from the hardcases, but he was damned if he could rescue him from the toils of a designing woman.

Aw, well, maybe Wells Fargo would make him an ex gratia payment.

That was something for him to dream about as he rode on out of Hellyer's Creek.

By the time I'd finished The Sandhills Shootings, my fifth western novel, I was hoping myself to cover more than expenses. Consequently, the book was submitted to several publishers and agents in the United States. The replies were uniformly dispiriting:

• "We are sorry to tell you that Fawcett Gold Medal has decided to discontinue its western line."
• "I've read through your material and think that you are a talented writer. Unfortunately, the market for traditional western novels is so soft these days that I just cannot offer representation to new western writers. It has become increasingly difficult to sell the projects that my established writers have sent in."
• "I am sorry, but I am not taking on any new western writers now, as I already have some prominent ones, and with the industrywide cutbacks on category fiction, taking on anyone else in this field would compete with what I already have going."

The response was better than rejection slips, but brought no joy. The shop was closed, even if the work done could be reckoned competition for prominent writers. Never being one who spends life hovering hopefully by the mailbox, I'd meanwhile pressed on and written The Gunman and the Actress. I'd also sent this book straight to Hale, so it appeared before the travelled second Dillard tale. Much can be said for "riding for the brand" — being loyal to the publisher who has given you previous backing.

Melodrama.

A Benchmark Tale

G & A was a romp — fast-moving and full of comedic touches, as good a benchmark as any for the Dillard stories.

Joshua took on the job of  troubleshooter for a French theatre company touring the West. Just routine bodyguarding, he supposed . . . till he met the amazing Gisèle Bourdette, a publicity-hungry superstar ahead of her time, choking the 1880s New World puritans on their censorious piety. Joshua committed the blunder of forming a liaison with the eager Gisèle, falling foul of her leading man and lover, Henri Rabier-Roget — a talentless hunk scourged by jealousy and the morphine habit.

Meanwhile, ruthless Borderland bandit "Loco Louey" Velarde was after the actress's unbanked takings, transported at her quaint insistence in gold coins. And sensitive Lorena, daughter of domineering rancher and cow-town opera house founder Bennett Maxwell, resisted an unwelcome suitor. . . .

This high melodrama was partly inspired by the US tours and character of actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923). A popular quote from Bernhardt runs, "Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich."

I like to think I captured some of this spirit in my book. Publisher Mr John Hale's first reaction was that he enjoyed the book though the plot was perhaps not as strong as its predecessor's. He also said, "Incidentally I would be grateful if in future westerns you could restrict the sex scenes as we are just not quite sure how the librarians throughout our territory react."

But this second Dillard in order of publication was well received and reprinted in a Linford Western Library large-print edition. As far as I know, no one was scandalized by the goings-on of Dillard and my lively French actress. Or not as much as folks had been by the real Sarah Bernhardt. . . .

I followed up with the book already written, The Sandhills Shootings, then the more sober Doomsday Mesa, a non-Dillard western. It was at this stage circumstances determined I could no longer justify making time for writing fiction, so I dropped out of the BHW team.

Back again years later, and with a favourable response to Frontier Brides and The Rebel and the Heiress, I had a story idea that would be a perfect vehicle for Joshua Dillard. I knew Mr Hale hadn't been Dillard's biggest fan, but gave it a try. The verdict on Ride the Wild Country was "has plenty of action and indeed all the ingredients we require". Though with fewer of the lighter touches that brightened G & A — and having darker characters, darker motives — R W C has a stronger plot while keeping the Dillard gusto, which I hope a reading of the opening extract will demonstrate.

Return ticket.

Joshua's Last Bow?

Confidence in Joshua Dillard renewed, time was ripe to fill in some of the detail of the back story that began during his Pinkerton years. But Mr Hale was reserved on receiving the synopsis for The Lawman and the Songbird. "It is very difficult," he wrote, "to give a judgement on the strength of sample material, particularly when there is a skilful author at work."

Mr Hale said he didn't think it normally satisfactory to have as a central character a man (Dillard) who was a non-hero and perhaps a failure. Secondly, the ending was inconclusive. A third hurdle was how much space I intended to devote to the flashback. "You could in effect be writing two novels and this would not really be acceptable."

Rashly, I ignored the warnings, forged ahead and wrote the book as I saw it. My feeling was that L & S would be Joshua Dillard's fifth outing for BHW, and the previous books had worked. Joshua's success/failure conundrum was what made him different, appealing. He always solved the mystery, disposed of the real villains, but never made his fortune. He was like a lot of us — doing his best and sticking to his values, but never winning the big money. Loser or not, most BHW readers seemed happy to identify with that.

The story was set in a gold-rush Montana, with settings modelled loosely on those in Ernest Haycox's 1941 classic Alder Gulch. The ending was conclusive inasmuch as what had happened to some stolen gold was revealed, the dastardly Blackie Dukes and his gang were routed, and a bigger villain unmasked and sent to his death.

Kate Thompson, the heroine, solved a marital problem and — remaining true to character — vanished a second time. But Joshua met his match in a lady, as other famous heroes throughout fiction history have done. I didn't really see a Joshua story ending in wedding bells. He had to ride on alone, in the way central characters in traditional westerns so often do.

The novel was a coherent whole — though if you will, of two parts with a time lapse marked by little more than a new chapter. Tying it all together were: Joshua's determination to use his position as town marshal in part two to clear his previous record in Cox City; the unfinished business nature of the early chapters; the same primary cast of characters and setting. In fiction, unity is not decided by calendar or clock. Even a short story can successfully span years.

Alas, on his first reading of the book Mr Hale didn't agree his reservations had been overcome. He saw too many drawbacks, which he again enumerated.

Since I had a summons to do jury service hanging over me, it would have been unwise to leap into a completely fresh book until the decks were cleared. So instead I put on a well-worn editorial hat in between times and set to work to remedy the perceived flaws, quite certain it could be done without compromising the established Dillard persona. Several broken days later, I printed out the new version of L & S readers will see in November.

Joshua's customary failures were more precisely explained as a result of others' interference or interpretation. I adjusted the emphasis to show a man of action, decisive and successful in accordance with his personal principles.

The leading female character, Kate, who Mr Hale had regarded as unsympathetic, was given a briefly sketched "orphan and wicked aunt" background to win her reader support from the outset.

The text pointed up that this wasn't two stories. In 1866, the gold goes missing and the Pinkerton Joshua's record is blackened. Nothing is resolved, so the story isn't over. Seven years later, the freelance Joshua (moneyless as usual) gets a chance to pick up the threads as Cox City's town marshal, and he takes it. To trim the first half, some of the historical detail on  the Pinkerton Detective Agency was taken out.

Mr Hale was pleasantly surprised. He had envisaged a necessity for drastic shortening and compression before the story "might ultimately pass muster". What was delivered was a conservative re-tuning. He responded, "When I started reading the revised version I have to confess I could see no difference between this and the original version. Fortunately though, as the story progressed, I could see that you had dealt with the points I raised. I am most grateful to you for this and am pleased to say we should like to publish the novel. May I send you the usual contract, please?"

The BHW readers' jury will deliberate on the results in due course.

But The Lawman and the Songbird will be the last Dillard for a while. The next two Chap O'Keefe novels don't feature him. Nor are there plans for another comeback. I've been working on a couple of books which introduce a small cast of original characters who currently appeal to me. They and their setting could well become the focus of a new series. The antecedents, once again, date back to the 1860s and the dime novels.

Exit Joshua Dillard? Who knows?

— Keith Chapman, aka Chap O'Keefe, whose next BHW Ride the Wild Country is published in July.

Lance Howard on where the genre stands today WHAT THE WESTERN OFFERS When most folks think of a western they imagine the archetypal shoot-'em-up, the John Wayne movies of the fifties and sixties, or the lively horse operas of Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour.

To a large extent that image is justified. High noon, gunfights at abandoned corrals, the bargirl with a heart of gold and the steely-eyed stranger who rides into town just in the nick of time to save everybody from the dastardly outlaw. . . . All are staples of the western genre. In the same way, the quick-witted detective populates many old-time mysteries (the '50s gumshoe being supplanted in the modern case by the pathology expert); the blue-eyed hunk oozing testosterone always gets the girl in romances; the ragtag rebel defies oppression in other worlds in science fiction.

All genres have their parameters and expectations, and succeed largely because readers demand them and want to feel comfortable whenever they crack a book in their favourite genre or pull up an electronic page on their PDA. But those very same conventions can result in a certain staleness after years of tales, as well as sometimes false perceptions from the general audience as to what those genres entail, and perhaps even a bias towards them.

The western has suffered from these perceptions, some deservedly so, others . . . not so much, to use a western idiom. In fact, few other genres, except maybe the romance (an amazingly versatile genre, despite misconceptions), have suffered as much from their label. So much so that the potentates of the New York publishing world have proclaimed the western deader than Wild Bill Hickok at a Deadwood poker game. While the cry has echoed throughout the hallowed concrete canyons of New York, its demise, to swipe another famous writer's phrase, has been largely exaggerated. But that's for another article.

This article seeks to inform readers of the western's great potential for innovation. Few other categories carry the capacity for such diversity and far-ranging human themes. And Robert Hale Ltd's Black Horse Western line is a leader in that field, perhaps the bellwether. The line combines old-fashioned fun and adventure in the Wild West with the opportunity for exploring themes relating to the human condition, bad and good.

Few modern readers, those who have never tried a western, realize its vast range. If you are looking for a shootout at noon on a dusty street in Nowhere, Texas, then by all means you will find it in a Black Horse Western book. If you are seeking a tender love story or commentary on the plight of the Native American, you'll find that, too.

But while these books harken back to the days when men were men, women were glad of it and you could still talk to your horse without being carted off to an institution (as long as the horse didn't talk back, of course), they also provide a bridge between generations of readers. Old and young fans alike can find everything they desire in the western nowadays. While many of the longer historicals have been in vogue over the 1990s, Hale's Black Horse Western line has trudged along with ten releases per month, year after year, travelling well-worn trails while blazing new ones.

Modern themes everyone can relate to have found their way into the Old West, largely because human nature has remained a constant for generations. The same struggles pioneers and town-builders, women and minorities, have faced for hundreds of years carry an egregious timelessness that all fiction, whether escapist or great literature, hold up before a spotlight. Modern readers can relate to the trials and tribulations of folks from earlier times, struggles the western is incredibly capable of exemplifying and dissecting.

For example, my own Lance Howard westerns seek to provide a few hours of escape from the problems of everyday life, yet at the same time I strive to provide a sense of hope, as well as explore issues that would be just as at home in a busy modern city as they would in the dusty back streets of a nascent settlement.

In The West Wolf, for instance, a sort of spooky mystery, the underlying themes focus on spousal abuse and the prejudices men sometimes use as focal points for their own shortcomings. The lead, an Apache woman named Serene Hargrove, lives with a drunkard who commonly takes his frustrations out on her person at the end of each day. The novel spotlights the ramifications of such misdirected rage, and the ripple effect its actions can have. Of course, it also provides a satisfying resolution to the problem, because the book is fiction and strives to furnish hope while shining light into the darkness. I decided to tackle largely the same sort of thing in my current novel, Ladigan. The lead, a man who has lost almost everything and now appears to have lost the last person remaining in his life, his brother, arrives in a small Colorado town only find it in the grips of a rich gold miner's son, a sadistic, insecure man whose world is built around control, absolute and cruel. The town is beholden to him, but primarily its people are frightened of his temper and wrath. Which leads to them turning their back on a young woman this man, Jack Timm, has decided to beat into doing his bidding.

Mystery and prejudice. Blind eyes turned.

The town merely watches, some even joining in, as he torments her. Within moments he will kill her, but no one dares lift a hand to help. No one wants to get involved. The young woman is the only one courageous enough to deny his request (one that will have to remain a mystery, because it is integral to the book) and she will pay dearly for it.

Of course the man named Ladigan arrives in time to prevent the worst from happening, but in doing so takes on the wrath of her tormentor and the crowd mentality that goes with it. It's a theme that would have worked as well on a large-city (or small-town) street in our present year. The emotions and fears, the hopes and dreams are the same, no matter the time period.

The western is perhaps one of the best places to portray the deplorable nature of some men. The mirror is dusty, but true.

Of course, there are countless examples in many other authors' books. The recent Frontier Brides by Chap O'Keefe (BHE's stalwart editor Keith Chapman), while a rollicking good adventure, touches on the plight of women caught in the grip of a despicable practice sadly still in operation in some Third World countries.

The examples could go on for pages, but suffice it to say the western today provides much more for the modern reader than simple cowboys and Indians. It has something for everyone, and Hale provides a plethora of tales every month. Readers are given a huge choice and countless hours of enjoyment and edification.

Never read a western? Consider giving this all-encompassing genre a chance. I think you'll be glad you did.

— Howard Hopkins, who writes westerns as Lance Howard, the latest being Ladigan. Read an extract here.

BHE#6 available September 30, 2005. Adios till then.
Email if you want reminding when it has been published.